by Ian Mann
September 22, 2024
/ LIVE
A classy live act that is continuing to build a strong following across both the jazz and prog rock spectrums. One of the most enjoyable events that I have attended at MSH at the Marr’s Bar.
Emily Francis Trio, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 19/09/2024.
Emily Francis – keyboards, Trevor Boxall – electric bass, Jamie Murray - drums
The latest Music Spoken Here event saw a pleasingly sizeable and highly supportive audience converging on the The Marr’s Bar for this exciting performance by keyboard player and composer Emily Francis and her trio.
It’s hard to believe that the band has recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, a fact acknowledged by the recent vinyl re-release of the trio’s debut album “The Absent”, which The Jazzmann reviewed back in 2015.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/emily-francis-trio-the-absent
The promise exhibited by “The Absent” recording also led to me checking out the band in the live environment for the first time when I covered a hugely enjoyable and highly successful performance in the foyer of Symphony Hall, Birmingham in February 2016. This show was one in the popular “Free Gigs” events organised by the Birmingham based Jazzlines organisation. Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/emily-francis-trio-symphony-hall-cafe-bar-birmingham-12-02-2016
Francis was born in Wimborne, Dorset and began playing when she received her first keyboard at the age of seven, a Christmas gift from her father, a singer and guitarist. Francis’ talents were encouraged by her father, who told her that good keyboard players would always be in demand. With this advice in mind she made a point of studying electric keyboards in addition to classical piano, a strategy that would prove beneficial to her future career.
The young Francis was performing warm up shows at Poole’s Lighthouse Arts Centre by the age of fourteen. A concert by the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (EST) at the venue was highly inspirational for her and she was also strongly influenced by Brad Mehldau.
Francis graduated from London College of Music in 2011 where she studied piano with Eddie Harvey and the late Pete Saberton. She and Boxall, also her life partner, formed the Emily Francis Trio in 2014 with original drummer Liam Waugh. This line up features on “The Absent” and also appeared at that Birmingham show. The début was primarily acoustic and revealed a strong EST influence, with the members of the trio also citing Mehldau, Herbie Hancock, Jason Rebello, Kenny Garrett and Steely Dan as further sources of inspiration at that time.
By the time of the Birmingham show Francis was beginning to experiment more extensively with electric keyboards, an approach that continued on the Arts Council funded ‘Video EP’ “New Town” in 2017, which was followed by another bout of touring. The band line up also changed around this time with Waugh being replaced by current drummer Jamie Murray.
Further video singles were released in 2019/20, with “Idol”, “Escape From The Echo Chamber” and “Broken Kingdom Part 1”. All of these subsequently appeared on the trio’s second full length album “Luma”, released in 2022 and reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/emily-francis-trio-luma
“Luma” focussed more comprehensively on the sounds of electric keyboards with Francis revealing two more major influences. Her fascination with electric keyboard sounds had been further fuelled by the final David Bowie album “Blackstar” (2016), which featured a band of New York based jazz musicians led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. That group’s keyboard player was Jason Lindner and Francis has continued to follow the solo careers of both McCaslin and Lindner.
A 2017 EFG London Jazz Festival double bill featuring Lindner’s Now vs Now project and the American quintet Kneebody, featuring saxophonist Ben Wendel and keyboard player Adam Benjamin, proved to be a seminal experience for Francis. Both Lindner and Benjamin altered the sounds of their Rhodes keyboards via a range of effects pedals, something that has had a profound influence on Francis’ own approach to playing and composing. In an interview with journalist Nick Hasted (Jazzwise Magazine, June 2022) she explained;
“It was the gig that changed my life. It was the first time I’d seen keyboards played like that. Seeing people combining jazz, rock, electronic, improvised, melodic and groovy music was this ‘Eureka!’ moment, there are other people out there making the kind of sounds I hear in my head. What I love about those American bands is that they’re just so hard hitting. They play their arses off! There’s no limits with these guys, in fact the weirder the better”.
Francis began to distance herself from her initial influences in favour of a harder hitting sound. Her early days of playing in function bands also began to feed in.
“Putting on a show is incredibly important”, she told Hasted. “We write what we want but the melody and groove are the main thing and we’re really proud to make the music accessible. I’m always thinking texturally, playing around with synths and outboard effects from my laptop to make the sound even bigger”.
Whilst favourably reviewing the “Luma” album I compared Francis’ new approach with that of bands such as GoGo Penguin and Vels Trio and suggested that she may be seeking out an audience beyond the usual jazz demographic. Francis is certainly aware of both acts but cites modern day prog rock artists such as Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson as more significant influences. Wilson’s keyboard player, the New York born Adam Holzman, a musician who has also worked with Miles Davis, is another musician whose playing has made a considerable impression on Francis. She has also mentioned American keyboard player Henry Hey of the band FORQ as a further source of inspiration.
In November 2023 the Emily Francis Trio played a highly successful show at the Corn Exchange Jazz Club in Ross-on-Wye, a performance that was also enjoyed by Music Spoken Here’s Dave Fuller, who then determined to bring the trio to the Marr’s Bar. Review here;
EFT’s music has attracted the attention of the progressive rock audience and the band has been reviewed favourably on more than one occasion in the influential Prog magazine. The trio has also been featured on the Progzilla radio programme. The prog rock connection has been further enhanced by Francis’ stint on the road as a member of the touring band of Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp, which played to capacity audiences all around the UK during 2023.
Francis has also worked with the singers Rumour and Leonie Gale. Meanwhile Boxall has performed with the great American guitarist Robben Ford and Murray with the British blues musician Conor Selby.
There were a number of new faces at the Marr’s Bar for tonight’s event, some of them presumably coming to the band from a prog rock rather than a jazz direction. Such cross fertilisation between genres can only be good for both band and venues and tonight’s audience really got behind the trio from the start. I had half expected to see the ‘Frippcoxes’ in the audience (Robert had previously been to the Marr’s Bar to see Iain Ballamy and Jeremy Stacey) but apparently they had been to an earlier EFT show in Stratford-upon-Avon instead.
Tonight’s performance featured a similar set list to the Ross show but saw the trio making some adjustments in acknowledgement of the fact that some audience members, notably myself, Dave Fuller and Dave Logan of the Corn Exchange, had also been at Ross. The programme featured material from both “The Absent” and “Luma” albums and from “Atomic”, a recently released EP featuring five new tracks.
Francis’ keyboard set up featured a Nord Stage 2 plus a Sequential Prophet 6 synthesiser and an array of effects pedals and other related devices. I would imagine that at some venues she also has access to an acoustic piano but tonight the focus was on electric keyboard sounds and the hardware was used to good effect on the opening “After The Rain”, a composition from the new “Atomic” EP. Spacey, sequenced keyboard sounds were combined with a searing synth solo on a track that has attracted the interest of the influential DJ, broadcaster and record label owner Gilles Peterson.
An updated version of “Hops ‘n’ Scotch” from the trio’s debut album was ushered in by Boxall on electric bass and featured a funky, soulful sound with Francis combining electric piano and synth sounds while Murray added a final drum flourish.
Francis has referred to her music as “prog jazz” and as a composer has referenced her fondness for combining strong narrative ideas with unusual time signatures. The film composer John Barry has been cited as a further influence , but it was the rock band Genesis that helped to inspire “Don’t Feed The Orchid”, another tune from the “Atomic” EP. All of the trio’s pieces are credited to the three group members and it was Murray’s desire to explore a “double drum sound” that provided the initial spark for this particular item. This was an upbeat, readily accessible composition with a song like structure and solid, hard driving rock rhythms. Boxall’s liquid electric bass solo was reminiscent of players such as Jaco Pastorius and Mark Egan and was underpinned by Francis’ string synth soundwashes. The piece was crowned by an explosive drum feature from the impressive Jamie Murray, the musician also known as ‘Drum Kat’.
From the “Luma” album “The Kite & The Crow” is a three part composition that describes the territorial battles between a kite and a crow in the back garden of the home Francis and Boxall share in Ascot. Francis sees this ‘avian battle’ as a parallel to similar disputes in human society, with the two protagonists eventually coming to some sort of resolution by simply ignoring each other. Dating from the lockdown period and described by Francis as being “a bit proggy” the foundation of the piece comes from a Boxall bass line that was subsequently developed by Francis. Musically the composition borrows from the legacy of prog rock, particularly through its use of shifting tempos, complex time signatures and odd meter grooves. Boxall and Murray rose to the rhythmic challenges with considerable aplomb as Francis deployed a hard edged electric piano sound for her first keyboard solo, this eventually followed by a further excursion on synth.
The first set concluded on an unexpectedly gentle note with the performance of the ballad “Broken Kingdom Part 2” , another piece from the “Luma” album. Centred around Boxall’s electric bass motif and with Murray initially deploying brushes this saw Francis adopting an ‘acoustic piano’ sound for the first time and soloing in lyrical fashion on a composition that she had introduced as being “more contemplative”. Towards the close the music acquired more of an anthemic quality, with Francis continuing on ‘acoustic piano’ but with Murray switching to sticks. Nevertheless it was a surprisingly low key way to conclude what had been an excellent first half.
The second set kicked off in more energetic fashion with a re-working of the tune “Trunk”, from the trio’s debut album. The title is an amalgam of the words “Trev” and “funk” and the initial idea for the composition came from Boxall. Although all compositions are credited to the Emily Francis Trio both Francis and Boxall write separately, with their compositional ideas later developed into the finished product by the entire band, with Boxall tending to contribute the funkier, groove based numbers. The recorded version includes an impressive guest appearance from guitarist (and oud player) Stefanos Tsourelis. Meanwhile tonight’s trio performance featured funky bass grooves, solid drumming and Headhunters inspired Rhodes and synth sounds. Murray delivered another powerful drum feature and there was also an unaccompanied bass feature from composer Boxall.
The funkiness continued on “Escape From The Echo Chamber”, a composition from the “Luma” album. Francis’ dirty, funky electric piano sounds owed something to the influence of Lindner and Benjamin, and during the more reflective and atmospheric moments some listeners may have been reminded of Ray Manzarek’s electric piano solo on The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”.
Next a change of pace with a segue of “Lydian Child” from the “Atomic” EP and “2 Bed Flat On Mars”, perhaps the most radical and futuristic track on “Luma”. Francis also works as a piano teacher and the composition “Lydian Child” began as an exercise to write a piece in the Lydian mode. Although Francis stated that the piece had never been played live before I recalled hearing it at Ross, where it was again segued with “2 Bed Flat”.
This was the trio at their most atmospheric with swirling, spacey analogue and string synth sounds, the whooshing and whistling of Francis’ various keyboard sounds combining with Murray’s cymbal scrapes and Boxall’s electric bass effects, with an element of live looping in there too. Francis’ ability to orchestrate sounds through layering and sculpting sometimes reminded me of the late, great Joe Zawinul of Weather Report fame, surely yet another influence. Tonight’s segue was substantially different to the one performed at Ross as Francis’ synth solo led to an extended dialogue between Boxall and Murray, with the latter delivering some positively brutal drumming towards the close as the music built to an unexpectedly explosive finale.
From the “Luma” album “Le Tambour, 2.00 AM” is a composition inspired by the threatening atmosphere outside a lairy Paris nightclub in the early hours of the morning. Ushered in by Boxall’s bass, later joined by Murray’s drums, the piece subsequently developed an EST style groove that buoyed Francis’ mix of keyboard sounds and her subsequent feverish soloing, combining electric and acoustic piano sounds, these accompanied by suitably agile bass and appropriately dynamic drumming.
Like all the pieces tonight this was a performance that was rapturously received by the Marr’s Bar audience and the trio needed little encouragement to remain on stage for a very well deserved encore. This proved to be “Shakey Jake”, a Boxall composition that featured on the “New Town” video EP. Written for the bassist’s then young nephew it’s a tune that’s been in the trio’s live repertoire since the early days and had featured at Birmingham back in 2016. Given that this was primarily one of Boxall’s tunes it came as no surprise to find that this was a funky offering with a supple, funky bass groove and a propulsive drum beat, these acting as the fuel for Francis’ dazzling electric piano soloing. It’s clearly a tune that the members of the trio love playing and their energy and their obvious collective joy in their music making was apparent throughout the evening. This is a band that play with smiles on their faces, not taking themselves too seriously, but still treating the music with the seriousness that it deserves. That musical joie de vivre is captured by Carl Freeman’s photograph of Emily, smiling behind her rack of keyboards.
My thanks to Emily, Trevor and Jamie for speaking with me after the show and also to Emily for her ‘shout out’ from the stage to myself, Dave Fuller and Dave Logan, the last named a long time supporter of the trio who has presented them at both Ross and Kenilworth Jazz Clubs.
This was one of the most enjoyable events that I have attended at Music Spoken Here at the Marr’s Bar, with the band and the audience establishing an excellent rapport, something encouraged by Francis’ warm, down to earth presenting style. It was also reflected in the high volume of merch sales, on both CD and vinyl.
This band is a classy live act that is continuing to build a strong following across both the jazz and prog rock spectrums. Even after more than a decade together this is a trio that is still growing and developing. Expect to hear more good things from them.
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